Virtual Teardown of Samsung Galaxy S4 Suggests $236 Build Material Cost

[dgstorm]

While we are still anxiously awaiting an actual physical teardown of the Samsung Galaxy S IV by someone like iFixit, the folks over at IHS iSuppli used their Mobile Handset Cost Model Service to do a virtual teardown of the SGS4 so we can at least get an idea of its manufacturing cost. Obviously their report can't be truly accurate without an actual physical SGS4 to breakdown, but it is still a good beginning reference estimate. The final manufacturing cost they came up with was $236 for the materials and $8.50 for manufacturing costs, for a total of about $245. This ends up being about $30 more than the cost of the Samsung Galaxy S3 from last year. Here's a quote with a few more details,

That is a significant increase from the bill of materials of the GALAXY S 3 from last year. iSuppli says that the reason the cost has gone up significantly has to do with major upgrades to the S 4 display, sensors, and APU. The company reports that the HSPA+ S 4 with 16 GB of storage costs $244 to build including the $8.50 manufacturing costs.

That price tag makes it $30.40 more expensive than the S 3. The teardown reveals that the new S 4 HD display and touch subsystem costs $75 on its own. The processor used in the smartphone is estimated at $30, while the S 3 had a processor estimated the cost $17.50. iSuppli estimates that the user interface and sensor subsystem on the GALAXY S 4 costs $16. Interestingly, the LTE version is cheaper to build than the HSPA+ version of the device. That LTE version of the smartphone has a bill of materials estimated to be $233.

It's interesting to see how far that build cost is from the final retail price of $600-650. Of course, keep in mind this does not factor in shipping costs, advertising costs and other overhead, so that disparity is likely not nearly as large as it seems.

Source: SlashGear